Roast Chicken with Lemon and Spices

Serves 4-6 depending on the size of chicken, and what you decide to serve with it.

You can make this and pop it into the oven straight away; or you can have it marinating in the fridge all day; then all you have to do in the evening is throw it in to the hot oven , and 25 mins later it is ready: easy !

Ingredients

1 chicken, jointed into 8 pieces

Grated rind and juice of 1 lemon

1 head of garlic, peeled but cloves left whole

Seeds of 10 green cardamon pods, crushed

1 tsp ground coriander seeds,

¼ to ½ tsp chilli flakes

½ tsp ground turmeric

50 ml olive oil

For the Cucumber Raita

1 tub Greek yoghurt

½ cucumber, seeded and finely diced

2 tbsp chopped coriander, or mint

Salt and pepper

4 tomatoes (optional)

**Put the yoghurt into a bowl, add the cucumber, coriander and some salt and pepper to taste. Chopped tomatoes can also be added into this.

Method

Put the chicken pieces into a bowl, mix the rest of the ingredients together, and add to the chicken.

Toss with your hands to cover the chicken with the spicy marinade.

Leave to marinade for 1-2 hours, if possible.

There are two ways to cook the chicken here: either you could cook the chicken in the spicy marinade for 1 hour at 150c; this way results in a lovely juicy dish giving everyone enough spicy ‘gravy’ to pour over the chicken when eating. Or you could cook the chicken quite quickly in an oven preheated at 250c for 25 min; this will give you a crispy result with not very much juice but delicious all the same. Either way, sprinkle salt over the chicken just before it goes in the oven.

If you put the salt in the marinade from the beginning the chicken tends to dry out a bit.

Serve with basmati rice, lemon roast potatoes or orzo

**NOTE This chicken recipe is very good cooked on the barbeque

**NOTE This really needs a raita of sorts, try a cooling CUCUMBER RAITA